The empiricism is based on the doctrine that any knowledge is derived from experience. Man can learn since he gets information (sensations) coming externally (the world). The existence of practice shows that it is through training and thus, through the results of experience that the game level increases…Similarly, it is through our senses: the touch of the grip, the sight of examples from the coach, and the hearing for balance, - that we are able to improve… In most cases, we operate by mimicry. Thus, by repeating some movements over and over again, by taking time to review our posture in action, we acquire this routine, which any good golfer requires, the result of what D. Humes describes as the habit process: Just like we know that the sun will always rise in the East, since we know this fact since our very childhood; by instinct, we are capable of hitting some very good shots because we have mechanically worked it out… We absorb the biomechanical laws of our body and manage, at the risk of language abuse, to ‘control’ them… Isn’t the untrained golfer like the “virgin wax”, to quote Aristotle, whose game is in a completely imperfect state… It is through experiences, sensations, that shall be imprinted on the wax the necessary know-how for his golf knowledge acquisition. If you happen to identify yourself with this golfer, for whom nothing there is no precursor to experience, then consider yourself, as from now, as a golf empiricist… Mind you… empiricist and not emperor…

Rationalism or how to discover the swing which is lying dormant in us…
Rationalists believe that the human being is capable of learning since he is gifted with reasoning, the learning process being a way of bringing out the knowledge lying very deep within each of us… One of the axioms of rationalism is that man’s reasoning is based on some universal rules such as the notions of time, space and number. Therefore, is it not fundamental that the golfer should be able to position himself on the fairway, to be able to size up the right mix and the scope of his moves to reach the green? When in action, I internally search for everything that makes me feel in harmony with the laws of nature: look for the right balance, the proper positioning of the legs… As I lift the club, and my body starts twisting, I get ready to work “the leverage effect”. These are so many rules only revealed to me through the results of an exhaustive assessment of my rational make-up. Here, the teacher no longer teaches. Like Socrates who stimulated minds to bring out the internal truth, wandering around on the Agora Plaza, through “the maieutics’ process … Isn’t the Golf coach like the mid wife who helps us give birth to one of the best swings which is dormant within us? Talking about teachers, Plato who was taught by Socrates, presents an interesting theory, “The myth of the cave”. In there, he describes men chained to one and another in a cave, their head facing the wall. At the back, a fire projects their shadow. Even further behind, there is a large entrance through which comes the sunlight. One day, one of those men frees himself from those chains and realises that what he was always seeing was just the shadow of reality. Thus he sets off towards light, knowledge and truth. Thus, somewhere somehow, golfers thus find themselves chained to one another, trapped in beliefs about their game… It is only when one amongst them can depart from his beliefs and finally see the truth, get out of this “cave of incompetence” that he shall be able to achieve His real swing… The authentic swing! The poor man, having hardly came back down to semidarkness to inform his former friends of misfortune – like any golfer who is thrilled after having finally discovered The swing, would have rushed to the Club House to share his knowledge – suffered the saddest of fates, the death sentence for having dared to take some individuals out of the intellectual comfort zone in which they had settled... There exists in golf, as in many other fields of genius, human beings whom ‘The Great Hand’ has predisposed to excellence…. But there are also golfers, who through sheer training have managed to grab the most beautiful trophies… Just like “man is neither angel nor beast”, as Pascal often liked to say, The Swing is neither totally nature nor totally nurture, it is the fruit of sound experience…